THQ’s Bankruptcy Auction: Who’s getting what? Updated

As we all know by this point, THQ has seen better days…actually I don’t think THQ could be seeing much worse days as over the past few weeks they’ve declared bankruptcy and lost all of the rights to their IPs. THQ’s IP and developers are being auctioned off as we speak and the internet is abuzz with all sorts of talk of exactly what publisher is going to get the goods. The auction is set to start at 3 PM EST January 22nd 2013, which is about 20 minutes ago as of posting this article, so things are about to get pretty interesting.

Something of note is that South Park Digital Studios has objected having South Park: The Stick of Truth sold at the auction, Citing a deal that THQ signed in June of 2011 stating that South Park Studios is excused from “accepting performance from or rendering performance to a party other than THQ.” and that the bankrupt publisher has “not provided adequate assurance of future performance of the Deal Memo in the hands of a prospective purchaser.” South Park Studios is seeking 2.275 million dollars in payments from the company and states that the deal that they made with THQ in 2011 gives them “the option to acquire from THQ all elements of the South Park game and related products” and it all sounds like a big mess, We’ll find out for sure what’s happening by tomorrow when everything is formally announced, and as i’m typing this things are still unfolding. I’ll be updating this article as to all information that I find as it assuredly will leak out onto the internet.

UPDATE: There’s no official word on it yet, But rumors are spreading quick that Sega has picked up Relic Games, notable for Company of Heroes and all of the Warhammer 40,000 games.

UPDATE 2: THQ’s CEO and President sent this letter to all THQ employees, it was then quickly passed around for everyone to see.

To All THQ Employees:

We now have the answers we’ve been seeking through our financial restructuring andChapter 11 case. While much will be written, here are the facts of the bids and auctionthat occurred t:

Yesterday morning, we received a competing bid for the operating business,along with Clearlake’s offer, and numerous offers for separate assets.

During an auction process that lasted over 22 hours, the final conclusion wasthat the separate-asset bids would net more than a single buyer for the majorityof the company.

Shortly, we will, present the results to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, which mustconcur with our assessment.

The proposed sales of multiple assets is as follows :

Sega agreed to purchase Relic

Koch Media agreed to purchase Volition and Metro

Crytek agreed to purchase Homefront

Take 2 agreed purchase Evolve and

Ubisoft agreed to purchase Montreal and South Park

UPDATE 3: Platinum Games, Developers behind Beyonetta, are looking into purchasing the possibly left behind Darksiders franchise, along with their developer, Vigil.

The IP that was out for companies to purchase is as follows:

Saint’s Row – Koch Media

Probably one of the best GTA clones on the market and without a doubt THQ’s most important piece of intellectual property. The release of Saint’s Row: The Third‘s Enter the Dominatrix expansion has been merged into the (possibly) upcoming Saint’s Row 4 and the future of the franchise, along with all of the other games on this list is still at least somewhat up in the air.

Homefront – Crytek

Quality issues aside, Homefront sold surprisingly well, But apparently not well enough to save developer Kaos Studios from being shut down in 2011 shortly after release. Development of the sequel was dropped onto Crytek and it’s believed to be in the works.

Company of Heroes – SEGA

Critically acclaimed WW2 RTS Company of Heroes undoubtedly has a lot of potential that’s yet to be tapped, and Company of Heroes 2 is almost finished with development so it’s believed to be released hopefully without too many problems.

Darksiders – Still seeking a buyer for now.

The Darksiders franchise wasn’t as successful as THQ obviously needed it to be, It didn’t sell enough copies to break even and probably left a dent in THQ’s pocketbook that they really didn’t want to be there. Sales aside Darksiders has a considerable fanbase and in the right hands can live a successful future.

Metro – Koch Media

Metro 2033 was a pretty hardcore title based off the Russian novel of the same name that released on the PC and Xbox 360 back in 2010 to generally favorable reviews, not to mention the Sequel Metro: Last Light is slated to be released in a short couple months.

Red Faction – Koch Media

Red Faction started it’s days back in 2001 with amazing destructible environments that allowed you to actually terraform the land you played on, But even with the promise of destruction the series hasn’t seen a whole lot of success in recent years. Red Faction: Armageddon proved to be too much of a loss for the publisher stacking on top of even more mistakes and getting the series cancelled, maybe somebody will be able to pick it back up and give us more sweet-ass “Geo-Mod” technology.

DeBlob

I don’t know a whole lot about this game, I hadn’t actually heard of it until this auction, in fact. DeBlob is a platform puzzler released on the Wii back in 2008 to what are some surprisingly favorable reviews and looks to be one of the few third party Wii titles that wasn’t a total mess.

MX vs ATV

MX vs ATV was a series of off road racing games that started back on the PS2 but didn’t seem to keep that fanbase following it into the newer generation. Years of slipping sales figures on the game caused it to be shelved along with the developer in 2011 after it’s final release.

There’s also a bit of confusion relating to rather THQ will be able to sell off their licensing deals with WWE, Warhammer 40k and of course South Park, but we’ll be figuring that out as time goes on. THQ also still holds distributing rights for Double Fine’s Stacking and Costume Quest and the company is believed to be purchasing those rights back but official word has yet to be seen.

Stay tuned for updates!

Written by: Cameron Wasmund

I'm not good at not liking games, Hit me up on the twitters.

Ridge

I just started playing Darksiders and it is more fun than I thought it would be. Damn shame the franchise’s future is up in the air..

I may have to give it a try sometime, If it’s as fun as people are saying it is I hope it finds a new home and doesn’t drift off into the sea of abandonware. (If that’s even what happens to the assets that nobody’s picking up.)

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